Trump’s anti-Semitic comments have a history in Zionism

US President Donald Trump added to his repertoire of racist comments this week, by making his latest, most openly anti-Semitic remark yet.

“Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat – I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” he said.

He later clarified that this “disloyalty” he claimed US Jews are guilty of is towards Israel. But it is hard to escape the feeling that Trump was actually accusing American Jews of being disloyal to the US – and to him.

Either way, his comments were disgustingly anti-Semitic.

Unlike British Jews, a substantial majority of whom vote Tory, American Jews overwhelmingly vote for the Democrats. A whopping 79 per cent of American Jewish voters opted for the Democrats in last year’s mid-term elections.

This article was produced in partnership with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

This story is part of an ongoing investigation into Mississippi’s corrections system. Sign up for the Locked Down newsletter to receive updates in this series as soon as they publish.

OXFORD, Miss. — Three University of Mississippi students have been suspended from their fraternity house and face possible investigation by the Department of Justice after posing with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign honoring slain civil rights icon Emmett Till.

One of the students posted a photo to his private Instagram account in March showing the trio in front of a roadside plaque commemorating the site where Till’s body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. The 14-year-old black youth was tortured and murdered in August 1955. An all-white, all-male jury acquitted two white men accused of the slaying.

The photo, which was obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica, shows an Ole Miss student named Ben LeClere holding a shotgun while standing in front of the bullet-pocked sign. His Kappa Alpha fraternity brother, John Lowe, stands on the other side with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. A third fraternity member squats below them. The photo appears to have been taken at night, the scene illuminated by lights from a vehicle.

LeClere posted the picture on Lowe’s birthday on March 1 with the message “one of Memphis’s finest and the worst influence I’ve ever met.”

We Found Photos of Ole Miss Students Posing With Guns in Front of a Shot-Up Emmett Till Memorial. Now They Face a Possible Civil Rights Investigation. We Found Photos of Ole Miss Students Posing With Guns in Front of a Shot-Up

Statistics gathered by the anti-discrimination charity showed reports of racism in English football rose by 43% – from 192 to 274 – last season.

“I think you can’t not link them together,” Wood told BBC Sport.

“We’re seeing a lot of reports of ‘go back to where you came from’ which we haven’t seen for a while which seems to be on the back of Brexit.”

Factoring in all forms of discrimination, reports of abuse in professional and grassroots football increased by 32% to 422, up from 319 during 2017-18. A further 159 reports were received via social media.

Reports of faith-based discrimination – including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism – rose by 75% from 36 to 63, a higher percentage than any other form of abuse during the period.

It is the seventh consecutive year reported incidents of discrimination within football have increased, and the 581 total reports is more than double the figure from five years ago.

“If we’re seeing a rise in hate crime, the Home Office is seeing a rise in hate crime and other bodies are seeing a rise in hate crime, it’s linked because that’s what is going on in society at the moment. If it’s there, we’ll see it in football,” Wood added.

“In some of the cases we have seen, there is a real hatred there which we haven’t maybe seen as much of in the past where it’s really violent and very targeted, particularly on social media.

“Some of the social media reports we’ve seen you wouldn’t want anyone to see.

“We’re talking to people all the time that feel, post-Brexit, that ‘maybe this country isn’t for me’.

“[Politicians] have to take that responsibility very seriously, they are the leaders of the country and they need to set the tone. Society is reflected in football.”

Reports of racist abuse rose by 43% last season, Kick It Out figures show

Japanese Canadians across the country are meeting to discuss how an apology by the British Columbia government could be backed by meaningful action for those who were placed in internment camps or forced into labour because of racist policies during the Second World War.

The federal government apologized in 1988 for its racism against “enemy aliens” after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941 but the president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians said British Columbia’s apology in 2012 did not involve the community.

Lorene Oikawa said the association is working with the provincial government to consider how it could follow up on the apology to redress racism. The majority of about 22,000 interned Japanese Canadians lived in B.C. before many were forced to move east of the Rockies or to Japan, even if they were born in Canada.

“We weren’t informed about the apology so it was a surprise to us,” Oikawa said about B.C.’s statement, which, unlike with the federal government’s apology, did not go further to resolve outstanding historic wrongs that saw families separated and property and belongings sold.

“We accepted the apology but we just want to have that follow-up piece that was missing so that is what the current B.C. government has agreed to and started with this process of having community consultations,” she said of the redress initiative funded by the province.

Consultations began in May and by the end of July will have been concluded in Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and seven other communities in British Columbia. Online consultations are also being conducted before recommendations will be forwarded to the province this fall.

So far, some participants have asked that school curricula include racism against Japanese Canadians as well as initiatives to educate the general public about the intergenerational trauma that families have experienced, Oikawa said.

On June 13, Brazil’s top court ruled that homophobia and transphobia should be framed as crimes under Brazil’s existing racism legislation.

There are no laws in Brazil’s penal code that explicitly address prejudice or violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The court says the new ruling addressed a legislative omission that failed to protect Brazil’s LGBTQ+ population.

Those who commit acts of violence against LGBTQ+ peoples could be punished with prison sentences of one to five years. Those are the current penalties for discrimination based on ethnicity, skin color, race, religion, or nationality according to a penal code provision in place since 1989.

The 11-member Supreme Court voted 8-3 for the criminalization in response to a lawsuit moved by the Brazilian Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestite, Transgender, and Intersex (ABGLT, in Portuguese) and the Popular Socialist Party (PPS).

In addition to punishing acts of violence, the court’s decision makes it a crime to deny educational and professional opportunities, as well as access to public services and government buildings, based on sexual orientation. The promotion of discriminatory attitudes or events on social networks and other media could also be punished under Brazil’s racism law.

Brazil has one of the highest murder rates of LGBTQ+ people in the world, coming behind Mexico, the United States, and Colombia.

In 2018, 420 LGBTQ+ people were killed — one every 20 hours, according to the Bahia’s Gay Group, one of the oldest LGBTQ+ rights groups in Brazil. Of those, 72 percent were homicides, and 24 percent were suicides.

New Trump Administration Rule an Attempt to End Asylum

In response to the anticipated release of a new interim final rule from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security attempting to ban those who seek safety at the U.S. southern border from asylum if they do not first apply for protection in at least one country through which they travel en route to the United States, Human Rights First’s Eleanor Acer issued the following statement:

President Trump is trying to end asylum, full stop. Once again, the Trump Administration is attempting to rewrite laws passed by Congress to protect refugees from return to persecution. This is yet another move to turn refugees with well-founded fears of persecution back to places where their lives are in danger—in fact the rule would deny asylum to refugees who do not apply for asylum in countries where they are in peril. The president can’t stand the fact that seeking protection in the United States is legal, so he’s doing everything he can to make the asylum process as difficult as possible.

Human Rights First notes that Congress passed laws to protect refugees with well-founded fears of persecution from return to danger and to ensure that asylum seekers can apply for such protection regardless of their nationality, travel route, or place of entry or arrival to the United States. Congress contemplated specific exceptions to this general rule in situations where an asylum seeker was “firmly resettled” in a third country on the way to the United States, or where there is a “safe third country” agreement in place to allow for the person’s return to a third country where he or she would be safe from persecution and would have access to a full and fair procedure for adjudication of the person’s protection claim. This regulation is inconsistent with those statutory provisions and beyond what Congress has authorized the administration to do.

Federal courts blocked the administration’s earlier illegal attempts to impose an asylum ban on those who crossed the southern border. Human Rights First itself, alongside the National Immigrant Justice Center, sued to block the administration’s earlier attempts to create an asylum ban, a policy now enjoined by the Ninth Circuit. This regulation is yet another attempt by the Administration to rewrite the laws passed by Congress through executive action, and it should meet with a similar response from the courts.

Donald Trump is on an Orwellian mission to redefine human rights

It has long been abundantly clear Trump has no respect for human rights. Now Pompeo wants to build a new framework to justify the rollback of protections

The president of the United States makes racist comments against members of Congress. He puts kids in cages. Attempts to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Praises dictators.

It has long been abundantly clear that Donald Trump has no respect for human rights. Now, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, wants to build a new intellectual framework to justify the administration’s rollback of human rights protections.

That is the only way to understand Pompeo’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights. In launching the group Pompeo explicitly stated that the purpose of the commission is to start from scratch in defining human rights. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Pompeo described part of the commission’s mandate: It will “address basic questions: What are our fundamental freedoms? Why do we have them? Who or what grants these rights?”

But it seems clear the intention is to both narrow the definition and application of rights. Pompeo said that the commission’s goal is to exclude “ad hoc” rights. While he does not elaborate on what “ad hoc” rights are, he attacks “politicians and bureaucrats” who “create new rights”, and many of the members of the commission appear to have been selected in no small part because they also want to roll back human rights.

As journalist Ali Rogin reported, one commissioner praised Saudi Arabia and defended it over the murder of the Washington Postjournalist Jamal Khashoggi, while another commissioner praised the United Arab Emirates and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic power grab. The commission chair, Mary Ann Glendon, opposes reproductive rights and marriage equality.

While the Trump administration seeks to redefine human rights, it is clearly ignoring the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which itself built on the fundamental freedoms enshrined in America’s own bill of rights. Developed by a commission composed of members from around the world and chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the declaration was forged in the wake of the second world war and adopted without dissent by the UN general assembly. A truly historic breakthrough – with countries of all political leanings and cultures backing a common definition of rights – the declaration has been a global north star ever since.

37 countries commend China’s human rights achievements

Ambassadors of 37 countries on Friday sent a joint letter to the President of the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to show their support for China on its “remarkable achievements in the field of human rights“.

“We commend China’s remarkable achievements in the field of human rights by adhering to the people-centered development philosophy and protecting and promoting human rights through development,” the joint letter read.

“We also appreciate China’s contributions to the international human rights cause,” it read.

The ambassadors expressed their “firm opposition” to relevant countries’ practice of politicizing human rights issues, by naming and shaming, and publicly exerting pressures on other countries.

“We urge the OHCHR, Treaty Bodies and relevant Special Procedures mandate holders to conduct their work in an objective and impartial manner according to their mandate and with true and genuinely credible information, and value the communication with member states,” the joint letter said.

The letter was signed by the ambassadors to UN at Geneva from Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Cuba, Algeria, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Nigeria, Angola, Togo, Tajikistan, Philippines, Belarus and a number of other countries from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world.

As for issues related to China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the UN envoys said that terrorism, separatism and religious extremism have caused enormous damage to people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including right to life, health and development.

“Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers,” they noted.

They mentioned that safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded.

Racism has no place in American politics,” Buttigieg tells attendee at Iowa event

Racism has no place in American politics,” Buttigieg tells attendee at Iowa event

2020 Democratic hopeful Pete Buttigieg told a man at an event in Iowa that “racism has no place in American politics

after the man said he should “just tell the black people of South Bend to stop committing crimes In June, a white police officer shot and killed a black man in South Bend in June, and Buttigieg, who is the mayor of South Bend, has been dealing with the fallout The man was booed by the crowd at the Carroll County, Iowa, barbecue after the comment. Buttigieg said I think that racism is not going to help but the man continued No, just stop committing crimes Has nothing to do with race The fact that a black person is four times as likely as a white person to be incarcerated for the exact same crime is evidence of systemic racism Buttigieg answered It is evidence of systemic racism and with all due respect sir, racism makes it harder for good police officers to do their job too It is a smear on law enforcement.

A Facebook group for border agents was rife with racism and sexism. Now DHS is investigating

A Facebook group for border agents was rife with racism and sexism. Now DHS is investigating

Federal officials are investigating whether agents participated in a private Facebook group for Border Patrol employees that hosted racist, sexist and sexually violent memes about immigrants and officials such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Matthew Klein, an assistant commissioner at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, called the Facebook group’s posts “disturbing” and said the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, of which CBP is a part, began an investigation after a report by the investigative site ProPublica The posts on the private group, which says it is for current and former Border Patrol agents, included caustic remarks about the deaths of migrants, sexually explicit images edited to include images of Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and xenophobic asides and comments, according to ProPublica The Washington Post was not able to confirm the existence of the group, called “I’m 10-15,” after the law enforcement code for “aliens in custody.” The private group is not visible to people who are not members Where Old Patrol meets New Patrol,” the group described itself, according to images ProPublica shared. “We are family, first and foremost. This is where the Green line starts, with us.